Cannes 2013: With 'The Great Gatsby,' Baz Luhrmann Returns to the Basics

An unusual character, an era with no tomorrow, an elevated director …. So here we have the much-anticipated “The Great Gatsby,” this mega Hollywood film, which Luhrmann’s fans received with tears in their eyes, and which his detractors received with an equal amount of skepticism. Luhrmann’s style is the essence of filmmaking for some and a choppy fraud for others. But contrary to the latter group’s fears, “Gatsby” marks a clear shift in the director’s career. For the first time, he penetrates the depths of the human soul in a film which finds perfect balance between the lightness of champagne and the heaviness of solitude. Get drunk, yes, but in order to forget more. Idealize, yes, but in order to avoid facing oneself. In this, “Gatsby” is a mature, forthright and, in the end, depressing film.

After “Australia,” a time warp of a film about an Australian engineer, Luhrmann returns to his basics, a hyperactive and frenetic visual style. But he returns with 10 more years under his belt and Fitzgerald in tow. The film makes a radical transition from frivolity to drama, a desperate and absolute pursuit of happiness based on wild years which deceive themselves, just as the film’s protagonists do. In this film, Luhrmann succeeds for the very first time in exploring his somber side and not always hiding behind his shiny filming habits. Crisis is omnipresent in the pomp of “Gatsby.” Darkness takes over the light as, little by little, a no-man’s-land of poverty extends to the borders of the Big Apple, ready to bite it sooner or later.

If the music was light and poppy in “Moulin Rouge,” here it becomes hip-hop and jazz, rougher and more aggressive. Crisis just came through there; it will come through here next. “The Great Gatsby” is a visual wonder, truly a cinematic lesson, a historical reconstruction, an infinite task of costumes and decoration. In this sense, the film is breathtaking — sometimes perhaps too much so. But Luhrmann was very smart, this time, to never allow his graphic palette to take precedence over humanity. He weaves the tale which, little by little, constrains his characters to fault, to giving up, to mediocrity. The confrontation of the love quintet in a theatrical and Dantean scene is the climax of the spectacle, brought by magnificent actors — firstly, by the always-powerful DiCaprio, but also by Joel Edgerton, a discovery of abounding drama, elegant and often spectacular. What if, finally, Gatsby was in fact the first Art Deco film?